The "1 percent" and the "99 percent" have become household phrases in the last few years. But in the course of moving discussions of income distribution percentiles beyond economic text books and in to the popular discourse of sound bites and protest signs, the nuances can get lost. Which brings us to some interesting new research about the 1 percent, discussed in a recent book called Chasing the American Dream.

Back when the Occupy Wall Street movement was fond of chanting We are the 99 percent the books co-author, Mark Rank, got curious about some of the assumptions buried in that chant. Who exactly is the 99 percent? Whats their relationship to that remaining, increasingly notorious 1 percent?

The whole debate struck Rank as very us versus them. Theres this image out there that those two groups do not cross over  that they're static groups, he says.

Rank is a professor of social welfare at Washington University, and so he had the tools to see if this static image of the 1 percent versus everyone else was true. He and his co-author, Thomas Hirschl of Cornell, combed through four decades of survey data that followed the lives of thousands of Americans to see how much money they made each year. And what they found surprised them.

Surely not as much as before as real incomes have dropped...that’s the thing...not as much as before, target the 1%...repeat until all are equally miserable and blaming everyone else until 0bummer keeps all the wealth with S0r0s and Gates and Buffet and other billionaire commies so they can control everything...

3
posted on 05/04/2014 5:29:10 PM PDT
by CincyRichieRich
(A government of the people and by the people...)

I disagree. I think what it shows is that all the “activists” screaming about the inequitable distribution of income, and how the “rich are getting richer” have it all wrong. Based on this data, income is more equitably distributed now than it was 40 years ago.

“If [Elena] Kagan [President Obamas nominee to the Supreme Court] is confirmed, Jews, who represent less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats. Is this Democrats idea of diversity?” — Pat Buchanan

“If you want to know ethnicity and power in the United States Senate, 13 members of the Senate are Jewish folks who are from 2 percent of the population. That is where real power is...” — Pat Buchanan

Rank is a professor of social welfare at Washington University, and so he had the tools to see if this static image of the 1 percent versus everyone else was true. He and his co-author, Thomas Hirschl of Cornell, combed through four decades of survey data that followed the lives of thousands of Americans to see how much money they made each year. And what they found surprised them.

That can’t be extrapolated from this data. For example, maybe it’s a ten percent drop in income for the people in the top 1% of income earners, but maybe for the rest, it’s a twenty percent drop. Of course for many more in the past two or three years than in the past fifty years, it’s been a 100% drop in income.

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